


Reservoir Dawgs

by EaglePursuit



Series: Another Summer's Sunny Days [13]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Crime Fighting, Heist, Jewelry, Matchmaker Mabel Pines, Post-Gravity Falls, Returning to Gravity Falls, Short, Teenage Dipper Pines, Teenage Dipper Pines and Mabel Pines, Teenage Mabel Pines, Treasure Hunting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:28:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25314574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EaglePursuit/pseuds/EaglePursuit
Summary: Part 13 of Another Summer's Sunny Days. Soos, Dipper, and Mabel foil a jewelry store robbery and hunt for stolen loot while Stan and Waddles look for truffles in the forest
Series: Another Summer's Sunny Days [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1792519
Kudos: 15





	Reservoir Dawgs

**Author's Note:**

> Based on: Disney’s Gravity Falls  
> Created by: Alex Hirsch
> 
> Beta readers: my wife & PK2317  
> Art by: KID | @KIDWMA

Reservoir Dawgs

Mabel and Stan looked over Dipper’s shoulders on a warm summer morning as he carefully read a guidebook on the Shack’s porch sofa.

“It seems pretty easy. We’ve got a pig. We’ve got a shovel. We’ve got a forest. We should be able to find  _ something _ ,” Dipper concluded.

Mabel looked at the book skeptically. “Are you sure they grow around here?”

“It says four kinds of truffles grow in Oregon,” he replied confidently.

“This is gonna be great!” Stan rubbed his hands together greedily. “I’m glad I decided to go with you guys, as a responsible guardian of course, after coincidentally overhearing your plans. It will be the perfect grunkle/grandnibling bonding activity, plus I…I mean,  _ we _ can earn a lotta money sellin’ those things.”

Dipper and Mabel rolled their eyes in response.

Soos stepped out on the porch in his old Staff shirt and cargo shorts. “Whoa, it’s hot out here! Hey, I was hoping you dudes could help me with some, uh...personal business today.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Dipper glanced at his sister and shrugged. “We were going to look for truffles, but we can do that some other time, I guess.”

Mabel nodded. “Sure, Soos. If it’s okay with Grunkle Stan.”

A duplicitous smirk briefly crossed Stan’s face. “Yeah, it’s fine with me. I think I’m gonna sit this one out though,” he begged off. “I got old man problems. Joints. Ow, my joints.”

“Hey, you were just about to go hiking through the woods with us.” Mabel scrutinized the old con artist suspiciously.

Stan grabbed his knee. “I know, but...Ow! My bursitis just flared up, I swear! I’m gonna go take a pill for it right now.”

“Alright, suit yourself, Mr. Pines.” Soos gave a morose shrug.

Mabel narrowed her eyes and pointed a finger at Stan’s chest. “Grunkle Stan, do not take Waddles into the woods without me. He could get hurt!”

“Sweetie,” —Stan held his hands up innocently— “I would never betray your trust like that just to potentially earn hundreds of dollars.”

She smiled at him in appreciation. “Thank you, Grunkle Stan.”

“A'ight, let’s load up in my truck, dudes.” Soos beckoned the way, as the matter was settled.

Dipper called shotgun.

“Darn it! I’ll race you!” Mabel took off towards the truck with Dipper gaining on her and Soos ambling along behind.

“Okay, I lied.” Stan smiled slyly at Waddles. “Come on, pig. Let’s go for a walk with my good friends, Mr. Shovel and Mr. Burlap Sack.”

* * *

Soos stopped the truck in front of a small boutique jewelry store a block off Main Street. The sign above the door read ‘B. Laundy’s Diamonds’ and had a large ear with a diamond stud earring lit with neon.

Mabel’s eyes lit up as she saw it out the passenger side window. “Soos?” —Mabel’s voice quavered with excitement— “What are we doing at a jewelry store?” She was grinning broadly in anticipation of his response.

Soos tried to play it cool but he couldn’t repress a smile. “Oh, you know. I just need you dudes to help me pick out an engagement ring.”

“That’s great, Soos!” Dipper slapped him on the back.

“Oh. My. Gosh,” Mabel exclaimed. “Soos, this is amazing! Candy, Grenda, and Paz are going to be so jealous when I tell them I got to help pick out an engagement ring!”

Soos looked at her in alarm. “Oh, uh...hey, can we just keep this a little secret between us for now, dudes?”

“Oh, yeah. Naturally,” Dipper agreed, pointedly eyeing his sister. “It goes without saying.”

“I promise I won’t tell!” Mabel swore quickly, looking a little sheepish.

“Okay, come on. Let’s do this, dudes.” They all climbed out of the truck and Soos led the way into the store, pushing through the glass front door. A ceiling fan in the middle of the room valiantly attempted to circulate air heated by numerous display case lamps. A bored saleswoman eyed them eagerly from behind a counter as they entered. They were the only customers there.

Mabel pulled Soos and Dipper towards a display where rings sparkled brightly under hot fluorescent lamps. “Ooo! These are beautiful,” she whispered, gazing at a series of rings with huge square-shaped diamonds.

“Hi, I’m Janet. They’re magnificent, aren’t they?” The saleswoman approached the trio. “Those are princess-cut stones. They’re all in the three to four carat range. And by the way, these rings are all available in woodpecker sizes as well.”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Soos chuckled. “I’m going to marry a human woman; definitely not a woodpecker or a video game character.”

“That was actually kind of up in the air at one point,” Dipper added helpfully.

Janet raised a questioning eyebrow, but her professionalism kept her focused. “So how much are you looking to spend, sir?” she asked.

Soos pulled a messy wad of bills out of his pocket, “About this much, I think.”

Janet regarded the loose pile of money with disappointment, mentally rolling back her anticipated commission on this sale. “That’s enough for a down payment, I suppose; if you want to get an installment plan.”

“Um, okay. Who knew diamonds were so expensive, dude?” Soos nervously crammed the money back in his pocket.

Janet led them to a display in the corner. “Why don’t you come look at some options that are more in your price range?”

The trio peered at a handful of plain-looking rings.

“Um. Are...these even diamonds?” Dipper asked incredulously, looking at a ring with a dull, brown gemstone.

“They’re industrial grade, lab-created diamonds,” Janet informed him with dull cheer.

Soos raised his eyebrows. “Oh, industrial means strong.” 

“At least this ring is gold.” Mabel pointed at one that sparkled yellow.

“It’s actually gold-plated tin,” Janet said neutrally.

Mabel patted Soos on the arm to reassure him. “I’m sure we’ll find the right one.”

* * *

Stan pondered the guide book as he and Waddles walked under the shady forest canopy. “It says they grow under douglas fir trees. Waddles, do you have any idea how to tell a douglas fir from any other kind of tree?” Stan asked the pig.

Waddles grunted uncertainly.

“Me either, buddy,” Stan replied. “Maybe you should just start sniffin’ around. The book says you should be a natural at this.”

Waddles put his nose to the ground, took in a deep breath, and began to zig zag across the forest floor.

“Now we’re talkin’.” Stan encouraged him, “Go, piggy!”

Waddles gradually slowed and began to circle a patch of ground where sunlight had penetrated the forest and warmed the soil.

“Did ya find somethin’?” Stan asked excitedly.

The pig flopped down in the sliver of warmth and began to snore.

“Oh no ya don’t,” Stan growled. “We ain’t gettin’ rich snoozin’ in the sun.” He pulled Waddles’ leash.

* * *

The front door flew open hard enough to impact the wall with a loud bang and cracked its glass. Two men in orange jumpsuits and ski masks burst into the jewelry store with guns drawn. Each one’s jumpsuit had a number tag on the front left side of the chest.

The first one through the door was large and muscular. He gestured with his gun to everyone inside. “Up against the wall!” 

Soos, Dipper, and Mabel raised their hands and lined up against the wall near the display case in the corner while the two robbers smashed open the other displays with the barrels of their guns and began loading jewelry into pillowcases.

Janet had the temerity to speak up. “You activated the silent alarms when you broke the case. The sheriff will be here any moment.”

The other robber, a small, wiry man, walked over to her and pointed his gun at her face, “Is there anything else in here?”

“Just the case in the corner,” Janet’s temerity turned to sobbing fear as she stared down the muzzle.

The muscular robber walked over to the display case next to Soos and the kids, “This stuff is garbage. Let’s just go!”

Soos looked down and sighed.

Dipper mumbled under his breath.

The muscular robber stopped in his tracks. He bent down and looked in Dipper’s face, “What’d you say, boy?”

Dipper stared back at him willfully, “I said ‘grappling hook’!”

As quick as a flash, Mabel pulled the grappling hook from her sweater and shot it at the fan in the center of the ceiling. It yanked her off her feet and she flew in a circle around the room a few feet above the tops of the display cases. The wiry robber was taken by surprise as she performed a flying kick to his chest with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. He went tumbling over a broken display case, striking the back of his head on the floor.

The muscular robber turned to watch Mabel launch into the air and Dipper took advantage of his diverted attention to punch him in the groin with a sickening thump. The robber dropped his pillowcase and immediately fell to the floor. Soos tipped the corner display case over, trapping him underneath. Dipper quickly the gun out of his hand.

Mabel dropped to the floor like a gymnast landing a routine and detached the grappling hook from the fan. “Ta-da!” 

Dipper noticed a folded piece of paper sticking out of the muscular robber’s pillowcase. He bent down and picked it up then stuffed it into his vest pocket.

“Oh, man!” chuckled Soos. “Let’s pull this dude’s mask off and see which innocent-seeming elderly person has a grudge against the jewelry store.”

Dipper pulled the ski mask off the muscular robber trapped under the display case. The man had a hard-bitten, rough face, etched with scars. He growled at them. 

Dipper looked up at Soos. “Um..this guy is probably just a regular criminal. I think you watch too much Duck-tective.”

Mabel, Dipper, and Soos heard Janet scream and turned to see the wiry robber stand up. “Hey!” Mabel yelled as she pointed her grappling hook at him, but he dodged out a door at the back of the store before she could get off a shot.

* * *

Waddles pulled Stan through a thicket of brush with his nose to the forest floor, ducking under as Stan was smacked in the face by branches. “It’s gonna be worth it. It’s all gonna be worth it,” He muttered and winced as thorns sliced his shins.

Waddles stopped in the middle of the thicket and began to root through the soil with his sensitive snout, overturning decaying leaf litter and pushing aside tree roots.

“Did ya find something, Waddles?” Stan asked hopefully. He tied the pig’s leash to a bush and began digging next to him with the shovel. Almost two feet down they uncovered a roiling light blue mass of goo. “Is that what a truffle looks like?” Stan pulled the truffle guide book out of his pocket.

Waddles jumped back as the blue goo extended a slimy pseudopod towards him, bumping into Stan’s legs and causing him to look down at the strange entity reaching for them both.

“Hot Belgian waffles!” Stan yelled frightfully. “I—I don’t know what that thing is, and I don’t wanna know! This is Ford’s department.” He started shoveling dirt back on top of the creature.

* * *

“I’ve seen you folks do some amazing things, but this tops them all,” Sheriff Blubs commended Dipper, Mabel, and Soos. “You just captured Quentin ‘Bloodyhand’ Brown, notorious jewelry store robber. He escaped from Gravity Hills Maximum Security Prison literally last night.”

They were standing in front of Blubs’s patrol car, looking through the windshield at Bloodyhand Brown in the backseat struggling in handcuffs.

“Is there a reward?” Mabel asked hopefully.

“Kid, you caught this guy so fast, there wasn’t even time to offer a reward,” Blubs answered, bemused. “But they say Bloodyhand’s hoard of loot was never found because he buried it in the forest near Gravity Falls before he was arrested fifteen years ago.”

“Do you have any idea who the other guy was; the one who ran out the back?” Dipper asked.

Blubs looked at some paperwork in his hand. “That was probably Jack Sebastian. He escaped with Bloodyhand last night.”

Deputy Durland jogged up to them from down the sidewalk, panting. “He got away,” he reported sadly.

“Don’t worry, Durland,” Blubs smiled. “You know I’ll never get away from you.”

“Or my love!” the deputy chuckled as they embraced.

“Well, dudes. That’s enough excitement for one day. Let’s go home.” Soos beckoned the twins towards his truck. “We can finish picking out a ring when they get this place cleaned up.”

After they put their seatbelts on, Dipper pulled the piece of paper he had taken from Quentin Brown’s pillowcase out of his pocket and unfolded it. “It’s a map!”

“Dip-dip!” —Mabel looked over his shoulder— “I think this leads to Bloodyhand’s treasure!” 

Soos perked up and leaned over to look. “I bet there’s some pretty sweet diamond rings in that treasure.”

“These are obviously visual landmarks,” Dipper mumbled as he scrutinized the map, running his finger over it back and forth. “There are distinctive trees, stumps, rocks; stuff like that. And there are instructions about which direction to head.”

Mabel looked at the map again. “Where do we start?”

“The library!” Dipper exclaimed.

“The what? I don’t see that anywhere on there,” Mabel furrowed her brow in confusion until realization set in. “Oh, man. We’re going to have to do research, aren’t we?”

Her brother rubbed his hands together. “Oh, yeah!”

* * *

Soos, Dipper, and Mabel walked into the Gravity Falls Library. “Oh, look. My favorite librarian is back,” Dipper remarked sarcastically to Mabel.

They approached the desk. “Hi, Cynthia. Remember me?” Dipper asked. The woman was sitting at her customary position, reading a different mystery novel.

“Yes,” Cynthia replied coldly without looking up.

“I uh, see you finished your other book,” Dipper tried to make conversation.

“Yes.”

“So did you get your shelving problem straightened out?”

“All the books are back where they belong, yes.” Cynthia looked up at him disdainfully. “And if I catch whomever did that, they will be banned from the library for life!”

Dipper chuckled nervously. “Okay, great! So, I know you love a good mystery. We’re trying to track down a news report from 1998. Do you keep newspapers from that far back?”

“We have them on microfiche. Follow me.” Cynthia said flatly as she stood and guided them to a small back room with a microfiche reader. She brought them a file full of transparent sheets with tiny images printed on them. “This is the Gravity Falls Gossiper from 1998,” she told them and left the room.

Dipper expertly loaded the first sheet into the viewer and brought it into focus on the first image printed on it. 

“Why am I not surprised you know exactly how to work this thing?” Mabel rolled her eyes.

“Nerds make the world go ‘round, Mabel,” Dipper retorted. “If you’re bored you can go back down to the Archive or something.” He and Soos began skimming the newspaper pages, looking for headlines about Quentin Brown while Mabel opted to pull her phone out and text her friends instead.

They finished the sheet of January issues and Dipper replaced it with the February sheet. He began flicking through the issues.

“Hey, dude. That’s me!” Soos stopped him on the fourth issue of February. The headline read ‘Gerbil-Child Freezes Tongue To Flagpole’ with a picture of an eight year old Soos dressed in a winter coat and knit hat licking a pole. He took out his phone and snapped a picture of the reader screen. “I bet Melody will get a kick out of this.” Dipper began to slouch as he moved on to the next image.

He sat upright forty minutes later. “Here it is!” He found the article they were looking for in the middle of the August sheet. “The headline is ‘Bloodyhand Caught Red-Handed’,” Dipper read. “It says here that he was caught at the base of the cliffs near Lookout Point after jumping out of a hijacked airplane with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry.”

“Then that’s where we should look, dudes,” Soos said enthusiastically.

* * *

“You better hope you found a truffle this time, Waddles. I’ve about had it with your ‘no-truffle-finding’ attitude,” Stan threatened the pig as it led him into a small clearing. 

Waddles stopped and grunted, pointing confidently towards the middle.

“Oh, what the heck is this!?” Stan cried in anger. Sitting askew in the middle of the clearing was a solitary, gray statue of a certain cyclopic triangle demon with its hand extended.

Waddles grunted encouragingly.

“Nope. I don’t care if the biggest truffle in the world is under it. I am not digging there. That thing gives me the creeps,” Stan shuddered. “Let’s go.” He pulled Waddles out of the clearing.

* * *

“Wow! What a great view. I can totally see why boys are always bringing their girlfriends up here. You can see the whole town!” Mabel stood on one of the low fence posts made out of old railroad ties, looking out over the valley.

“I don’t think that’s it,” Dipper responded flatly as he handed Soos a shovel from the bed of the truck.

“Soos, have you ever brought Melody up here to see this?” Mabel asked.

“Ha ha, uh...” Soos chuckled nervously. “What was the question again, hambone?”

Mabel turned around. “I’m just messing with you. I know what people come up here to do.”

“Great!” Dipper replied in relief. “Then we don’t need to discuss or think about it any more.”

“Wait! Dipper does this remind you of the hill where you and Crystal broke up?” Mabel asked him facetiously.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Now I definitely don’t want to think or talk about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m fine,” he said flatly. “I’m  _ going to be _ fine…as long as I don’t think about it.” He walked to the edge of the cliff and unfolded the map.

“Well, let me know if there’s anything I can do to help. I am an expert matchmaker after all. I could help you get a great rebound, Dip-dop,” Mabel offered with a grin.

Dipper rolled his eyes sarcastically. “Thanks, Mabel. I appreciate it.” 

“Hey look, dudes,” Soos pointed. “I think that tree with the forked trunk down there looks kinda like the one on the map.”

Dipper held the map up to compare. “Yeah, I think you’re right. Let’s check it out.”

“Last one to the bottom of the cliff is a stinky gnome!” Mabel snared the bumper on Soos’s truck with the grappling hook and began rappelling down the cliff.

“I think I’m just going to take the trail over there.” Dipper indicated a switchback trail with a sign that labeled it ‘Cliff Base Trail’.

“Yeah, let’s do that,” Soos agreed and hefted their shovel on his shoulder.

Ten minutes later they met Mabel at the bottom where she was standing next to a truck bumper.

Soos looked at it in amazement. “Whoa, that bumper came off a truck just like mine.”

“Ha ha, wow. What a  _ total _ coincidence.” Mabel smiled nervously.

Dipper pulled the map from his pocket again and held it up so he could compare it to the tree with split trunks, “Wow, Bloodyhand is actually a pretty good artist. That’s probably exactly what this tree looked like fifteen years ago. Based on how it’s shown, I think we need to be standing where we can see a stump between the forked trunk as if it were a gunsight.” He led them in a long, loose arc around the forked tree, all the while comparing their view to the map.

“Oh look, dude.” Soos pointed. “There’s a stump over there behind those bushes.”

“You’re right,” Dipper agreed. “They probably weren’t there when Quentin Brown drew the map.” They took a few more steps until the stump was positioned between the forked trunks of the tree in their perspective. “Now we need to back away from the tree fifty paces, then turn to the northeast,” Dipper continued. He walked up to the tree and began to count his steps as he took long adult-size paces away from it.

“Wouldn’t you rather turn to the  _ Northwest _ , Dipper?” Mabel asked teasingly.

“Mabel, the map clearly says northeast. I have no idea why you want me to turn a whole ninety degrees counterclockwise. We would end up way off,” Dipper held up his phone horizontally, using a GPS compass to find their heading. “We need to walk 200 paces this direction,” he pointed. “We’re looking for a pile of boulders.”

Mabel sighed in frustration, then she and Soos followed Dipper as he resolutely pushed through the undergrowth. Dipper counted his two hundredth step and stopped in a dense copse of trees, “Okay, anybody see any boulders?” It was hard to see much in the midst of all the trees.

“We’re probably pretty close, dude,” Soos said. “It’s hard to keep a straight line in the forest and your steps probably aren’t like the robber guy’s. We just need to look around.”

“Good point,” Dipper admitted. “Let’s split up. Don’t go too far, and shout if you see some boulders.”

* * *

Stan and Waddles inelegantly clambered through a patch of deadfall trees which had been knocked over in a windstorm that had blown through the valley several years before.

“I’m gonna die out here, aren’t I, Waddles?” Stan asked as he sat on a fallen log to catch his breath.

Waddles oinked indifferently.

“It would help if I had any idea where we are,” he muttered disconsolately. He looked up as he heard a rustling in the brush nearby. “It’s just a squirrel, right? Please tell me it’s a squirrel.” He froze as it came closer.

A dense stand of brush right next to them began to shake dramatically. Waddles squealed in fear and cowered behind a log as Stan stood up unsteadily and prepared to fight whatever it was with the shovel.

An enormous creature loomed out of the brush and stood upright, high over Stan’s head. Stan swung the shovel, but the beast caught it with its mighty paws.

“Whoa, Stan. I didn’t expect to see you out here,” it said in a deep gravelly voice.

“Oh hey, Multi-bear. I’m just hangin’ out. You know, like I always do; in the middle of the forest.” Stan feigned casualness.

Multi-bear looked at him suspiciously. “You…and this pig?”

“Whoa, no! It’s not like that. Why would you even think that? We’re just looking for truffles.” Stan held up his hands placatively.

“Truffles? Here?” Multi-bear laughed. “There aren’t even any douglas firs in this valley. Only ponderosa pines grow around Gravity Falls. You need to climb over the mountains and find douglas firs on a north-facing slope.”

“Ugh,” Stan grunted in disgust. “That’s it. It’s officially not worth it. I’ve dragged this pig all over the woods. I’ve been lost. I’ve been attacked by I don’t even know what. And all for nothing. I’m going home.” He started scrambling over a fallen tree.

Multi-bear held up a paw. “Um, Stan. The Mystery Shack is the other direction.”

* * *

“I think I found it!” Mabel yelled from a hundred yards west of where they split up. 

Dipper and Soos made their way towards the girl and found her sitting on top of a pile of boulders higher than their heads. The pile occupied over two hundred square yards in the midst of the forest and had been left there by a receding glacier sometime in the distant past.

“Nice work!” Dipper complimented her. “The forest is so thick, you can’t even see it from a dozen yards away!”

Soos pointed to Dipper’s pocket. “What do we do now, dude?”

He pulled the map out. “The final instruction is that we need to dig under the top of the A, whatever that means.”

“Maybe Bloodyhand carved an A on one of the rocks or trees here. Let’s look around,” Mabel suggested.

They scoured the area for carvings without any luck.

“I haven’t seen any As,” Soos reported forlornly. “I haven’t seen any letters at all.”

Mabel blew a raspberry. “I saw a bee over here, but it flew away.” She was getting bored.

Dipper sat down on a boulder to look the map over again.

Mabel walked over to a nearby pine tree with evenly spaced branches, “Ha! This tree looks like a ladder.” She started to climb it. “Hey, bro-bro. This is fun! We should have brought Pacifica along. She’s always wanted to climb a pine tree,” she teased.

Dipper was distracted with the map. “I seriously doubt she has ever climbed any kind of tree. Her parents wouldn’t allow it.”

Mabel reached the top of the tree and turned around. “Dipper…” 

“Mabel, can you please stop goofing off. I’m trying to focus,” he snapped at her.

“Dipper, I found the A.”

He climbed the tree and stood on the branch next to her. From the higher perspective, the boulder pile itself was shaped like an A. He let out a low whistle. “Quentin Brown must have seen it like this when he parachuted out of the airplane.”

They began digging under a corner of the pile which they identified as the top of the A. They took turns, each digging for ten minutes, making the hole larger and deeper. On Soos’s third turn the shovel struck something with a dull, percussive sound. He carefully removed the rest of the dirt and revealed a large steel box. He found a pair of rusty handles on the sides and tried to lift it.

“Whoa, This thing is loaded. Dude, you're going to have to help me,” he told Dipper.

He and Dipper wrestled the box out of the hole and opened the lid. Inside they found a tangled pile of loose jewelry of all descriptions as well as multiple bundles of cash tightly wrapped in plastic.

Mabel extracted several necklaces from the stash and placed them around her neck and slipped a gaudy ruby ring on her finger. She held out her hand as if inviting someone to kiss it and affected a posh British accent, “Lady Mabelton. Charmed, I’m sure.”

Soos pulled a diamond ring out of the pile, “Now this is a nice one; way bigger than any of those princess rings at the jewelry store. I know Melody will like it.”

“She’s gonna love it,” Dipper told him as he held up a bundle of cash to inspect it.

The quiet party in the clearing was interrupted by the recognizable sound of a gun being cocked. Everybody froze. They had been so invested in the loot that they hadn’t noticed a fourth person approach the pile of boulders.

“Everybody put all that stuff back in the box,” commanded the voice of the wiry robber. “And you, little girl, pull that grappling hook out and toss it in the woods.”

They did as they were told and turned around to see Jack Sebastian threatening them with his gun, still wearing his orange prison jumpsuit. “You’re not going to get away with this, Jack,” Dipper said menacingly.

“Oh, I don’t want to get away with it. I’m going to turn it in, ” Jack replied with a stony sneer. “I’m Officer Dale Tompkins with the U.S. Marshals.”

“Prove it!” Mabel demanded.

The man reached into the back of his jumpsuit and pulled out a wallet with a government identification card and a badge, “Is this good enough for ya?”

“Um, where were you keeping that?” Mabel asked “Those jumpsuits don’t have pockets.”

“I’ve been in that prison for eighteen months trying to convince Brown to disclose the location of the missing jewelry,” Tompkins replied. “I know all the tricks for hiding things.”

“Ewwww,” The other three shuddered.

Dipper asked, “Why did you help Brown escape and rob the jewelry store?”

“He said he would take me to his buried loot if I helped him escape, but first he wanted me to help him knock over a store first to prove I wasn’t a cop,” Tompkins explained. “I figured, why not? Those stolen goods will be returned after we find this loot.”

“How are you going to get this box out of here?” Soos asked.

“I already called in a helicopter to our location. They’ll drop a rope and pick me and the box up. You guys will have to walk back. Sorry about that.” He didn’t sound sorry.

Soos sighed and looked down sorrowfully.

“Okay, look,” Tompkins lowered the gun, suddenly sympathetic. “The Marshals have a list of all the jewelry in that box from the stores that were robbed. My boss will find out if any of it is missing. But we didn’t realize there was money too. You guys made my job a heck of a lot easier finding this stuff, and I know you had some plans. So just take one of the cash bundles and get out of here.”

* * *

Stan was sitting on a lawn chair next to his RV with an ice pack on each knee, sipping a cold beverage when Soos and the kids returned from their errand. Waddles was curled up at his feet and didn’t even open an eye to see who it was.

Dipper climbed out of the back seat with a box in his hands, “Hey Grunkle Stan, how are your joints? Feeling better yet?”

“Nah, I feel like I marched to heck and back,” he responded gruffly. “Whacha got in the box?”

“Oh, this is a Gamestation 4. And I got Fight Fighters X. It turned out that Soos’s personal business was pretty lucrative. It’s too bad you couldn’t go.” Dipper grinned at him.

Mabel flounced out of the truck’s front seat excitedly. “Grunkle Stan, I refilled all my crafting supplies! I was dangerously low on glitter.” 

“And I picked out a little something for Melody,” Soos added.

Stan groaned, slid down in the chair, and slapped one of his ice packs on his face.

Be sure to read the next adventure:

Gnomebound


End file.
